Tuesday, February 21, 2012

trusting an archer, trusting myself

My back is pressed against warm metal. The heat becomes
tactile comfort as it absorbs through my ratty t-shirt. Tears dry on my face
leaving tightening trails of salt on my otherwise perspiring skin. i’m 15 years
old and i’m lying on the hood of my friend’s car, the engine still hot from the
drive.

My heart is broken. A love lost seems to afford infinite
pain without the chance of healing. This is worsened by the fact that i do not
know who or what i am, and i am painfully aware of this lack of knowledge i
purse my lips around an illicit cigarette in hopes of finding comfort in this
act of embracing destruction. This is met with some degree of success. My sobs
have faded into breath, yet i remain hopeless. How can life ever be worthwhile?
Without love? Without self?

My eyes meet the brilliant Wisconsin sky, stars no longer
obscured and fractured by saline sadness. Tiny points of light come into
crystalline focus. i notice one pattern in particular. Seven distant points of
light have sent waves across eons to meet me in this moment.

i recognize Orion and stare in wonder. i become infinitely
small and feel my body in waves. i begin to resonate with the universe. This
pain is a part of the spiral shape of the universe, meted out
semi-formulaically to all who draw breath. Somehow this fatalistic perspective
affords me further comfort. i smoke and eventually i doze. i awake with the
morning dew and meet a new day.

Fast forward. It’s five years later and i’m wearing black,
all black, from my knit cap to my shoes, even my keffiyeh is black. i’m also
wearing points of light. My clothes are covered in broken glass. A not-so-close
friend and i had gotten in a car-totaling crash during an Appalachian blizzard.

We had been stranded for a few days before i could catch a
bus out of Clearwater, PA. i had taken 2 buses already, am on a third, with the
daunting reality of two more to go. The fact that i cannot attain a more direct
route is confounding.

i press my face against cold glass, the buttons on my black
cap ticking against the window with each jolt. Sighing, i stare off the edge of
a mountain into the oblivion beyond the atmosphere. i feel alone. Even when i
eventually reach my destination i will still feel alienated from all of my
surroundings, and i still do not know myself. This fact has become even more
acute in the years after the moment in Wisconsin.

Again i am greeted by seven distant balls of heat. i inhale
deeply, the crisp air cooling the depths of my lungs, and i remember. i
remember that i can see Orion from home. i’ve been able to see Orion from every
place that i have ever thought of as home. i recognize it as a touchstone and i
realize that perhaps home is something that is with me.

Flash ahead again. The next year i am still wearing black. i’m
attempting to push down a consistent alienation from myself with desperate
grasps at identity. Tonight though, i’m also wearing pink. My floppy mohawk has
been brightly dyed to cast a queer contrast to my ostensible militancy.

i’m lying on my back on the roof of the Pilsen apartment i’m
staying at. i’d spent most of the preceding summer in a valium haze, giving
myself temporal distance from a rape that i blocked out of my psyche after it
happened.

Apparently i couldn’t block it out forever. i had read
something that led me to remember. Remembrance in a flush of feeling. A body
memory. A reliving. How had that happened? i immediately recognize my
subconscious’ capacity and motivation, but i cannot not imagine a way forward
and question its wisdom in cluing me in at this moment.

So i’m lying on my roof, drinking shamelessly out of a
bottle of merlot. This is a love affair that will last quite some time. i look
to the street for answers. Seeing only pollution and trucks and desolate
streets i look skyward. It’s a cloudy night. It’s windy and cold. But i won’t
go back inside, or else i can’t.

i look skyward and eventually the clouds break. They reveal
an archer, pointing toward a truth. i open my mouth and i scream into the
emptiness and i cry. i am not open to guidance from the universe. i cry. i want
this to be circumstance and i try to believe that it is. Eventually my sobbing
becomes too heavy and i too tired. As i lay on the tar roof, resigned, i become
open. i will give myself time and space to heal. i do not yet recognize that
this will be a life-long process. i breathe.

A couple years and a couple genders later i am in Iowa City.
i’m generally more in tune with myself. My struggles have shifted to a place of
explicit self-awareness. Again i have lost love. i’d worked to learn to trust again
after a long abusive relationship. That trust has been hurt, as have i.

i’ve come to visit a friend and am hoping to clear my head.
My friend invites me out to their back porch for a cigarette. Some comforts
seem ageless, so i accept. As i step outside i meet a friend older than time. i
can only discern one constellation between the clouds. i breathe deeply, i
haven’t thought about Orion in a long while.

i press my back against the house to feel something other
than spiritual conspiracy. This has the added effect of shielding me from the
wind. i look at my friend, who somehow seems to understand the significance of
the moment. i look back at the sky, tears beginning to well, an old pain settles in and overwhelms. “You just somehow
know, don’t you?” i become grounded. i resolve to try to trust in my own
strength.